Saber-Series: The History

A young twenty something year old fresh out of the Army and working the graveyard shifts at  Stokely-Van Camp's pork and beans cannery decided to use this time to begin writing about one of the true loves in his life...baseball. Bill James grew up an avid fan and writer and so when he returned home from South Korea and began working overnight he decided that it was the perfect opportunity to express his love for the game on paper. But there was something different about James, he was an avid fan of the game but like so many others he didn't care about the usual hoot and hollering of player interviews and clubhouse atmospheres. James was concerned with what was happening on the field and in his writings he would often like to pose questions such as  "Which pitchers and catchers allow runners to steal the most bases?" James would then follow this question up with an analysis to determine the answers and he would present it in his own witty way. Few took him seriously at the time and many editors feared that a general audience wouldn't understand or even care about what James had to offer. This didn't stop James because in 1977 he self published his first book, The Bill James Abstract.

The Bill James Abstract of 1977 contained 80 pages of James' own analysis, he compiled his data from hundreds of box scores from the previous year and these in depth statistics were the bulk of the book. The abstracts eventually picked up steam and every year fans waited for their copy to come in the mail during spring so that they could read up on their favorite players and teams. James was successful at this for quite a few years but after writing twelve of his abstracts, James discontinued the publication in 1988 citing a burnout related to his workload. James went onto write a few historical abstracts entitled "The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract" and also wrote a few other annuals with the most prominent being "The Bill James Handbook" which he began writing in 2003 and continues to this day. James who is considered to be the god-father of sabermetrics had no intention of slowing down and his work thrust advanced statistics into the mainstream creating a culture that not even MLB teams could ignore. Billy Beane, Oakland A's GM began applying advanced statistical analysis to his team beginning in the 90's. But as I said, James had no intention of leaving the game and in 2003 John Henry, new owner of the Boston Red Sox hired James.

The hiring of Bill James by the Boston Red Sox signaled a shift in the sails for Major League Baseball, teams, owners, and executives were slowly but surely beginning to see the advantages of using sabermetrics. Although not everybody was happy and Red Sox manager at the time Grady Little criticized James idea of ousting a traditional closer and using several marginally talented relievers to finish a game. James has always been very tight lipped about his involvement with the Red Sox front office but it is believed that James has gained much more respect and guiding input as the years progressed. In fact, James is often given credit for the Bo Sox first World Series win in 86 years (2004.) Since then the Red Sox have won two World Series and as of 2013 James is still employed by the team. 

James innovations with the game of baseball have been nearly unparalleled. He is credited with the creation of several notable stats used in sabermetrics today such as Runs Created, Range Factor, Win Shares, Defensive Efficiency Rating, etc. (all of which I will explain in future articles). His work clearly continues to resonate throughout the game and we owe him at least as devoted fans to better understand the fundamentals of the science.

Now I could go on for several dozen pages about the history of sabermetrics, its founders, its work, but what I am trying to accomplish here is give the average/above average fan a base of knowledge on sabermetrics. Bill James who like I said is often considered the god father of the science is a crucial part of that history and that is why I wanted to give you his background. Below I will list some URL's to James' work and if you have any other questions reagrding the history of the science or more about it's early days please feel free to ask. As for now this is all I am going to talk about it's history because I want to begin explaining the actual science.Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next edition of Saber-Series coming out later this week!

 http://www.billjamesonline.com 

http://www.amazon.com/Bill-James/e/B000APEB6Y

http://sabr.org/about/bill-james